I'm not Yingjie

"Whether you are wearing a helmet or not, whether you are eating or sleeping, whether you are sad or happy."

"The expression hasn't changed."

……I see.

"I saw in the profile that if you want to make people laugh, you have to act funny. I didn't know what funny was, so I imitated the people in the profile."

"Kelin, still not smiling."

Smile?

Lin Wuran found that he had forgotten the last time he laughed. No, he seemed to not know how to laugh now.

Smiling is the activity of the Duchenne muscle and the zygomatic major muscle. So can he control these two muscles to smile?

No.

He wanted to move his facial muscles, but it was like he couldn't move the area below his neck, so he couldn't change his expression at all.

"Dr. Mei can laugh, Velvet can laugh, Kevin can laugh, Delta can laugh, Alysia can laugh... Everyone can laugh, using their smiles to express their feelings, and to hide their feelings. Only Lin uses his helmet as his face and never laughs."

helmet……

Unconsciously, the helmet became Lin's representative symbol. There was always only a blue window between others and Lin's face. No one could see what he looked like under the helmet. Some people might guess that his face under the helmet actually had emotions, but Prometheus, who could see inside, knew...

No, the only difference between Lin's face and the visible window is the material and style, which are exactly the same.

It's not so much that he's wearing a helmet, it's just that his face is shown in a different way.

This helmet is his face.

After trying it, Lin asked Prometheus, "What about you? You didn't laugh either."

"I can."

As soon as he finished speaking, Prometheus' face came close to Lin, and he raised the corners of his mouth with two fingers, forming a twisted "smile".

"…Not this kind. I can do this kind, too."

"Lin can't."

"I..." Lin was about to refute Prometheus, then he suddenly woke up and realized that he really couldn't do it like her now.

Prometheus released the fingers that were lifting the corners of his mouth, and gently pressed down his helmet with both hands. His red eyes flashed as he observed the appearance inside Lin's helmet.

“I want to see Lin smile.”

Lin broke free of her hand and calmly said to the AI ​​girl who would be with him for a long time:

"If you can laugh yourself, then I'll show you."

……

"Doc, here are today's statistics."

"Okay, leave it there."

Mebius picked up the coffee and just took a sip when she felt a bitter taste spreading from her tongue. She widened her eyes and resisted the urge to spit it all out. She turned around and spit all the coffee in her mouth into the trash can, then took an empty cup and quickly ran to the water dispenser to get a glass of boiled water to rinse her mouth.

"Gulu gulu..."

She washed her tongue several times before getting rid of the disgusting bitter taste. She leaned on the table, gnashed her teeth and looked at the three people in the laboratory and asked, "Who made the coffee today?"

Klein and Cang Xuan pointed at Danzhu at the same time in perfect tacit understanding.

"Eh? Eh! Wait a minute..." Danzhu, who was still thinking hard about how to fill out the form, looked up and saw Mebius's extremely aggressive green eyes. She was so scared that she jumped up and trembled all over, "Doctor, is there a problem? I am doing my job very seriously! I am not slacking off!"

Mebius was too lazy to talk nonsense with her and asked directly: "Did you make the coffee today?"

"It's me, what's wrong?"

Mebius put the coffee cup on her table unhappily and said two simple words: "Drink it."

Danzhu picked up the cup suspiciously, glanced at Mebius carefully, and then put his mouth to the brim of the cup...

"puff--"

Mebius put down the document bag he was using to cover his face and took out a piece of paper to wipe off the coffee and saliva on it.

Danzhu's expression was even more bitter than coffee and he went to get a glass of water to rinse his mouth.

"I'm sorry, Doctor. I made the coffee the way Lin taught me. I won't do it again next time."

"... Next time you have instant coffee, don't make hand-ground coffee." Mobius was also a little helpless. She could understand that Danzhu wanted to show off her skills after learning a little from Lin, but she was not that kind of person. The way she ground coffee powder was almost the same as polishing the water outlet when making a model.

Then again, did Lin originally teach her how to brew hand-ground coffee?

Mebius only remembered that when Lin was in the laboratory, he was the one who made coffee every time. After he was paralyzed, he switched to instant coffee. It took her some time to adapt before she could drink instant coffee again.

"Forget it...it's time for lunch, let's take a rest first."

Mebius yawned. She didn't sleep much last night. She worked all night to debug new medicines. It was already six o'clock in the morning when she finished the work.

This is also because the situation within the Fire Moth has been getting worse recently. Even after the Fourth Honkai Impact, the focus of the debate was not the Fourth Honkai Impact or the Fourth Herrscher, but Mei, who started working in the R&D department.

Human stupidity is never out of date.

Mebius couldn't help but sneer as he thought of their heated arguments, which were like monkeys jumping up and down fighting for territory.

“Then let’s eat today…” She pointed at several buckets of instant noodles with different flavors. But before she could choose, Klein came over.

Klein frowned and snatched the instant noodles in front of her with a rare firmness: "Doctor, why are you planning to eat instant noodles again? It's not good for your health. Go eat a nutritious meal since it's so close to the cafeteria."

"It's too much trouble." Mobius was in no mood to be treated like a rare animal. "I might as well eat instant noodles."

"No."

"Tsk, if that guy wasn't here..." Mebius raised his eyebrows and suddenly closed his mouth.

Then again, the internal chaos of the Fire Moth was a mess, but that guy was able to stay out of it and go on vacation. It's really unpleasant when you think about it.

It’s not that I miss that guy’s meals or his occasional assistance that was more accurate than a machine, it’s just that he should have been the center of the vortex, but now he’s been exiled as if he were running away.

"That guy? Is he Mr. Lin?"

"Huh, you heard it wrong."

Mebius turned and walked out the door.

Then he turned back and said, "You guys come with me to the cafeteria."

Chapter 26 Orders

"The Fire Moth is responsible for killing monsters, not creating them."

"That's just strengthening humanity! This is a journey that must be taken for the future of humanity!"

“Human?! If humans and Honkai beasts merge, are they still humans? What’s the difference between them and Death Warriors, Honkai beasts, and Herrschers!”

"So are we just going to sit there and wait for death?"

"The Fire Moth exists for humanity! If we destroy ourselves before the Collapse destroys us, then what is the point of the Fire Moth's existence! Just to create more monsters!"

……

After the meeting that was full of quarrels, Kevin and May returned to the office. May picked up the cold cup of water and took a sip.

She didn't say a word the whole time, but all the arguments revolved around her, as if she could become a hot topic just by sitting there.

A similar situation can be traced back to the pagan debates of the Middle Ages.

"Mei." Kevin looked at Mei with some concern. For the past two and a half months, she had been shuttling between meetings and the R&D department almost simultaneously. One could imagine the pressure she was under.

"It's okay. It's normal for humans to have disputes over opinions. Self-criticism and progress are not bad things." Mei put down her water cup, took off her glasses and wiped the mist off them, saying, "Humanity has not yet reached the point where it needs to place all its bets on one person."

"Compared to this, Kevin, I heard that you scolded the new recruit to the team and made him cry. What's going on?"

Kevin's expression became a little subtle when he heard Mei talking about this: "How should I put it... He was a civilian child who assisted me during the Fourth Honkai. His name was Kosmo. He took the initiative to respond to the call of the Fire Moth after the Fourth Honkai ended, but for some reason it took him two months to officially join the team. His childhood sweetheart, a girl, was officially assigned to the Fifth Squad long ago."

"Then he started to act like a hero on the first day of group simulation training."

Mei leaned back on the table, very interested in the child he was talking about: "Be a hero?"

"He left the team without permission, disobeyed orders, and fired at random... His combat ability is excellent, but he is even more of a rookie when it comes to following orders. He fantasizes all day long that he can accomplish something big on his own, so I taught him a lesson."

"Is he imitating you?" Mei couldn't help laughing, "Imitating sexual behavior, maybe you saved him during the fourth collapse, so he wanted to learn from you."

"I think it's more like Lin." Kevin sighed and had a headache.

Mei typed on her computer, but still didn't receive any communication from Prometheus: "Lin...I guess he hasn't been doing well these days."

"He will definitely come back." Kevin showed a determined look, "We have an appointment."

If Lin can say that he will come back, then he will definitely come back.

"Hehe." Mei smiled meaningfully.

"Well... Anyway, I believe him." Kevin seemed to feel that his recent calm captain image had collapsed a little, so he coughed twice to relieve it.

“I believe it…”

These two words should be considered the words that run through the three of them.

Mei was about to say something else when an encrypted message suddenly popped up on her computer.

“……” Mei lowered her head and tapped her fingers on the keyboard a few times, and another long paragraph of information popped up.

Her pupils reflected the code that occupied the entire screen, and her expression became cold.

"What's wrong?" Kevin noticed the change in Mei's state and asked alertly.

"Kevin...are you free tonight?"

"what are you up to?"

"Dating."

……

Half a month later, the weather began to turn cooler and the flowers in the garden began to wither.

The man in the helmet sat in front of the petals that had fallen to the ground.

Lin closed his eyes and tried to lift the fingers of his right hand, focusing all his consciousness on controlling his body and simulating the movements that once came naturally.

The allusion in the idiom "learning to walk in Handan" reflects Lin's current situation very well. He is equivalent to learning instinctive movements that even babies can do. This sense of disharmony is the root cause of his recovery.

Don't use too much force, just enough to lift your fingers.

Lin's index finger trembled slightly. After a minute, he lifted it up with great effort and stopped unsteadily at the top.

After lifting his index finger, he began to try his other thumbs. It took him nearly ten minutes to lift them all up and maintain the position before he stopped to rest.

OK, now try your whole palm.

"Forest."

Prometheus interrupted Lin.

He opened his eyes and saw Prometheus picking up a bunch of petals and putting them back into the flowerbed. Then he said to him, "Sakura has left."

"Where to go?"

"I don't know, but she was armed when she left. This is surveillance footage from the intersection."

A camera shot of an intersection popped up on the viewing window, and he saw Ying carrying a golf club backpack and walking across the road with her head lowered. Needless to say, he didn't know what was inside.

"She disappeared after that and I couldn't find her from other surveillance footage."

"…Prometheus, enlarge what's in Sakura's hand."

Lin stared at Sakura in the picture. He couldn't see clearly due to the pixels, but Sakura was obviously looking down at her hands, which must be holding something.

"Restoring pixel quality." A red light flashed through the pupils, and the scene in front of Lin's eyes seemed to be washed away, turning from blurry to clear, and then continued to enlarge, and finally stopped in one of the pictures, which happened to be the picture of Ying looking down at her hands.

Prometheus scanned the circular shape, then compared it with the information in the database, and finally found thousands of results.

"Lin, I can't confirm what Ying is holding."

Lin's neck slowly leaned against the wheelchair. He closed his eyes, feeling the oxygen escaping from his lungs. After a long while, he said faintly, "...That is the emblem of the Fire Moth. Compare the two."

"Comparing... After comparison, the probability that the object Sakura held was the Fire Moth Soldier Badge is 93%."

After doing this, Prometheus fell silent.

Her logical thinking was faster than Lin's, so as soon as she confirmed that it was the Fire Moth Badge, she knew where she was going.